Paper Daisies (18 page)

But I don't need goading, not this time. I don't care if Mr Wilberry wishes for tea or half a cup of river mud; I am compelled towards him. I have been unpleasant, Greta is right, and I would like to show him that I am not that unpleasant person. He and Mr Thompson have done us an enormous favour by being here with us; I can't be rude to him, any more than I might entertain any other thought of him, or he me. And yet I am somehow as easily entranced by him as I draw near to him, watching him. An ibis watches him, too, from the shade of the bank opposite. What is Mr Wilberry searching for? Bent over the reeds now, poised, stalking up towards the bank now like the white shadow of some primordial hunter. In fact, as I come closer again, I see he's holding a knife. A small pocket knife.

He reaches into the reeds, to the back of the strand where the bank is steeply cut. Pulls out a reedy sort of thing, topped with a cluster of violet flowers, though I know they are not violets, I know that much about flowers. These are small, droopy and somewhat untidy star-shaped things, crumpled around their edges. He is turning the stem around in his hand, utterly unaware of my approach along the top of the bank.

I ask him: ‘What have you got there?'

‘Oh?' He startles, surprised as he looks up to find me looking down at him, but there is some triumph in his smile as he holds the flower out to show me: ‘Pudding lily. At least, that's what they're known as where I come from.
Arthropodium strictum
,
they are properly called.'

‘Yes?' Not particularly fascinating to me. The blooms look like crushed voile; doubtless a native. Yet I see something of its delicacy now, held as it is in such large hands … It seems impossible that these great, broad farmer's hands should hold such a fine stem.

‘Yes,' he says; somehow unchained, unhooked himself here in what is obviously his preferred world. ‘The scent of it – smells like vanilla custard. Do you think so?' He holds it up to me; somehow a different man, as if he's slaked off a burden, forgotten to be nervous.

The flower smells like something sugary rolled in dirt to me, and I'm sure the face I make says precisely that.

And his chuckle is the warmest sound I've ever heard. ‘It's quite edible, too, the tubers at least.' His eyes are blue flecked through with brown, not unlike mine. ‘Though I wouldn't recommend it. Pretty bitter really.'

‘Well, we shan't have any for luncheon, then, shall we?' I do like this man; a sadness drags, willow-like, through me.

‘No, I should think not.' He smiles again, our smiles meeting, just for a moment, before he steps effortlessly up the high bank, unbuckles his haversack lying there and pulls out a little press, unbuckling that too. So deftly he cuts and places the flower stem in the press and snaps it shut, an action he's performed a thousand times.

‘Why do you press that one?' I ask him as he buckles it up again. ‘How is it of interest to you?'

‘Oh?' Now he is surprised by my interest; how sweet he looks in that surprise. ‘The pollen is very deep in colour,' he explains, ‘unusually dark yellow, almost cinnamon, I suppose – ha? I must make a note of it – unlikely the colour will preserve well, you know, it'll leach out by the time it eventually finds its way back to Melbourne …'

No, I don't know. I've never pressed a flower in my life; never likely to.

He takes a notebook out of the front pocket of his haversack. ‘I could store it in my sand jar, attempt to keep the colour fast, but I'd rather save that in case something of greater interest …' he trails off, absorbed in his note.

I continue to watch him, quick sharp scratches on the page, and although I cannot know what these next few days will bring, success or failure, freedom or worse entrapment, I know I shall never forget this man. I hear myself ask him absently: ‘Would you like a cup of tea?' Somewhere off up the river.

‘Tea? Oh, all right, why not,' he says, looking up from his notebook, before appearing to wince, perhaps at some self-admonishment, suddenly uncomfortable with himself again: ‘Ah, I mean to say. Thank you … yes?'

Yes? No? I don't know. For this moment time has stopped in the blush of his abashment, the sunburst of his lashes, looking down upon me and yet not. This warmth all over my skin. One lovely and impossible moment before I say: ‘Right. Good. But we can't stop here long.' And I am rude once more, each word serrated. ‘We must keep tight to our schedule if we're to make it to Hill End before sunset.'

As if I travel this road regularly. As if Mr Wilberry has done anything to earn my rebuke.

But he only nods now, and smiles that gentle, questing smile as if in fact he does seek to see through me and my strangeness. He picks up his haversack and walks away towards his friend, and I watch him. He turns back to me after a few steps and he says: ‘The poppies are beautiful, by the way.' Trailing sunlight over his shoulder: ‘Exotics, though. You know. My interest is in the indigenous …' He leaves the thought trailing, too, and my interest remains in the loping strides: the world is his, surely. Any world. He taps his friend on the end of his boot to rouse him. The boot kicks out playfully, and Mr Wilberry grasps the toe, pretending to wrestle it. Then he walks on to the stallions, stroking Jack along the jaw, before hanging his haversack back on the saddle.

Such a good man. A man of quiet passion. I see my hand upon his arm at dawn this morning, my fists against the broad back of his dinner jacket last night, and I could touch him again now too. But I shan't. I won't. I do not know what that touch might do.

Ben

‘A
w, it'll take as long as it takes, Miss Berylda,' Buckley is telling her over our tea, how long it might be before we break again for lunch. ‘The road can get a bit tricky from here.' He glances at me to remind me of that, too, of my primary purpose here: to ride ahead.

‘Oh?' She laughs, but it's a thin sound; nervous. ‘Hasn't it been tricky enough so far?'

Ah – she doesn't like the travelling. I could say something about that – I could reassure her, couldn't I? I look into the tea leaves in the bottom of my cup for the words, but my entire mind falls around the sound
umm.

And she has turned away again; only slightly, but definitely away. She seems to have spent this whole cup of tea at this slight turning away, so that we have edged around one hundred and eighty degrees from fireside to river.

Have I said something wrong? Did I talk too much about plants earlier? How might I know? I thought I was conversing quite well for a second there but … I spoke only of plants, didn't I. Pudding lilies. Bloody hell, I don't know how to do this. I should give up.

Don't you dare
,
Mama warns.

I look behind me to Cos, as though that will help me; he's still lying there where I left him, wrecked and semiconscious, in the shade.

‘Mr Wilberry?'

Yes, at last. She speaks to me. I turn back to the river. But it's the sister, Greta, stepping up towards the fire here from where she has been drawing in her book down by the water, waving at me.

‘Mr Wilberry,' the sisters say it now at once: Berylda taking my cup from me and stepping away as Greta nears, holding out her book. ‘Tell me, please, what do you think of my tree?'

‘Tree?' What do I know about trees? Just don't go on too much about them, Mr Wilberry. I take the book from her and find good reason to be speechless anyway. God, she's good. I don't know enough about art to say exactly what it is – a movement, an emotion perhaps,
in what she has sketched out across the page. It's a willow tree, but it's not merely a tree; it's two women: wood sprites, one wrapped around the trunk, twisted through the deep-fissured bark, tormented somehow as though caught by the tree, or inside it; while the other looks down at her from the branches above, reaching for her, trying to gain her attention, perhaps to pull her up. And then, in what appears to be the reflection of the tree in the river, I see yet another sprite: looking up from under the water, as though begging the one in the trunk to go. It's a haunting image.

‘That's quite extraordinary, Miss Jones,' I finally manage to say, still looking into it. ‘Extraordinarily good.'

‘Greta, please. Just Greta for friends,' she corrects me, taking her book back, quickly, closing it, hiding it behind her back. ‘Do you really think it's good?'

‘Er … yes. I very much do. You are –'

‘We must get cracking, I'm afraid,' Berylda calls up from the river's edge, shaking out the cups she has washed there; and now she is walking away altogether, returning to the buggy.

‘Oh Ryldy, there's no great hurry, is there?' Greta calls back.

‘You won't be saying that if we get caught out here in the dark later on,' Berylda replies to the air, charging on.

‘I might.' Greta laughs. ‘Scaredy-cat!'

She shakes her head, and then smiles up at me in some sort of affectionate apology: ‘My sister.' Before following her. I watch them both, dainty boots marching through the clover there, skirts brushing across the poppies.

‘Kick out the fire and we'll get off then, aye?' the old man Buckley says beside me now.

And I say: ‘Yep.'

We stamp out the fire and I get the feeling that he's enjoying a laugh at me, under his hat. I'm sure he thinks I'm all tangled up over a couple of pretty girls. And that's true. But there is much more going on here: some kind of maze of distraction. I'm looking down at the pit of smouldering, half-burnt bits of branches and the image of the willow sprites swims through me, more a feeling than a picture. Really, extraordinary. What a talent. One I don't have
.
I can't draw a convincing stick man.

But I had better rouse Cos.

‘What!' He rattles awake when I kick the toe of his boot, and his little book of
Zarathustra
, open on his face, flies off onto the grass, pages rustling.

‘Giddy up,' I say. ‘Time to get back on the donkey.'

‘No,' he protests, and then remembers he has no choice; holding out a hand for me to help him up. ‘I have to piss.'

‘Of course you do.' Because you're not my best friend, you're my infant. I glance over to Berylda, sitting in the buggy with her sister, golden everlasting heads bowed over something again; perhaps the drawing book. Waiting to be off. Waiting for me and Cos.

‘Well, hurry up then,' I tell him, nodding across the trail. ‘Go.'

And he looks across the trail too, into the bush. Helplessly. ‘Where?'

‘You are joking.' But he's not. Ever the devil-may-care radical, aren't you, until we stray too far from the cricket green. What was I thinking, asking him to leave Brisbane with me in the first place? I wasn't thinking at all. I was mad; I am not now. ‘Just bloody
go –
anywhere.'

He rubs his beard, as near to embarrassed as he ever gets, as well he should be: he even has a lavatory in the main house at the Swamp, first thing he did when he inherited the place as a token of his grandfather's pity, and an eternal font of amusement for Susan: it's the only palatial part of the old relic. He says: ‘But there might be snakes.'

There might. Undoubtedly there are. I saw a beautiful diamond python sunning itself further up the bank when we got here. There is also a nasty load of spitfire caterpillars in the gum leaves above him right now. But I won't argue with him further by pointing out that there is more chance of one of them falling down the back of his collar, or a bull ant crawling up his trousers, than a snake showing any interest in him, or that it is in the very nature of snakes to make every endeavour to avoid him absolutely. He's still terrified of them, obviously – barely ever set foot in a cane field at least partially, if not entirely, because of this phobia. I give in quickly: ‘All right, I'll come with you.'

I signal to the old man that we're going for a walk in the woods, and we soon find a suitably dense boronia for Cos to go behind. I crush a handful of its leaves as I wait for him, breathe in the scent – of camphor,
ledifolia
then – and with it comes that note of rosemary and something … Everything is redolent with her scent, it seems. All the forest breathes out her scent, and I am as impatient as she is to be away now too – deeper into this forest, beyond willows and poppies, where the flora will be pristinely rugged, clinging to the walls of the gorge, to the mean soil. I take in another breath full of the earthy perfume, and with it comes renewed determination: when we stop for lunch, I'm going to have another go, I'm going to convince her to go for a walk with me. If I'm alone with her, I'll be forced to –

‘What the flaming deuces is that?' Cos bowls backs into me, midstream, pointing uphill a way to what appears to be an outcrop of granite. But it's not a rock; it's a cairn of stones, with a cross set in the top of it. A gravesite.

‘Poor bugger,' I say to this lonely soul. A miner, perhaps, out of luck and out of time; I've seen these kinds of graves before: along the Kuranda railway, in the rainforest of the far north; and one as far again south, in the wind-torn mallee scrub outside Castlemaine, by a decaying bark hut. Sad little memorials to the gold rushes, there'd be hundreds of them across the country; thousands possibly. I tell Cos: ‘It's just someone's grave.'

‘I'll probably die on this road too, Wilber.' Cos is in a hurry to button up. ‘And you'll bloody well carry me down off it. You'll bloody well carry me all the way home.'

‘I will, Cos. I promise you.' And I'll share a toast with your mother, too, for all the suffering that ended here.

I'm already halfway back to the horses; the buggy is coming onto the Track and Berylda glances over the carriage rail, the briefest hurry-up of a glance; Buckley lifting his hat to me: ‘We'll find yous at the river crossing.'

I nod in reply, but I'm still looking at Berylda, at the back of her hat; wanting her to glance at me again, even as I'm taking the reins back over Jack's head.

‘Ben – whoa.' Cos is shuffling up behind me, still tucking in his shirt. ‘Steady on, old matey.'

‘Steady on?' I reach for Rebel's reins now too, the quicker to be going; left to Cos, we'd be here half an hour. I tell him: ‘Get back in the saddle – now. Or you can stay here with old matey over there.' I nod back at the grave.

He heaves himself up, and then he says: ‘I mean steady on with that girl. Don't be so quick to jump to for her.'

‘Why not?' I don't hide my annoyance with him at this. ‘Have you decided you don't like her either?'

‘It's not a matter of like,' he says. ‘I don't know that she's the chasing kind. Hold your horses on her, that's all. She's a strange one, not normal, and you're –'

‘Not normal? Unlike you?' I have a vague recollection of him having said something similar as we stumbled back to the pub last night; what did he call her? I can't remember at this minute. I tell him now: ‘You think she's not
normal
because she's not shown the slightest bit of interest in you.'

‘Aw.' He smacks his hand to his heart as though I've shot him, then he warns me again: ‘I only say you should be careful, Ben. Don't go too off your kadoova on her. She's just a girl.'

‘Just a girl?' As if I chase skirt the way he does; as though I ever would. He's cranked me up properly now; I say: ‘Just a girl – like Susan?'

I kick my horse off towards the trail, not waiting for a reply, and I'm so cranked at that, as I pass the buggy, I forget to look at her at all. What does Cos know about women, really? What do I know? Nothing.

His horse follows mine and after a minute or two he's in my ear again, still thudding around in the saddle, as he says: ‘I love Susan.' His breath catching on every word.

I look over at him: sweating, hopeless mess, as blithered as I am when all is said and done, and I say: ‘I know you do.'

‘Poor Susie.' He laughs. But he means it. He couldn't tell you why he is unfaithful to her, any more than he could tell you why he drinks, or paints, or generally confides more in Kevin the taxidermied curator than anyone else on earth. I don't know why I do anything I do either. You can only blame your father and your family so much, can't you.

Our horses settle into stride together, and Cos settles back into amiable whingeing: ‘Moses in a roasting pan, it's getting hot, isn't it.'

And I have to agree: it is suddenly hot now. As the sun climbs so does this heat: exponentially, it seems. I fish around in my satchel for my hat. The cicadas are going for it as the road begins to climb too, winding round the side of yet another hill. I look down to the Macquarie below, a blue ribbon now, almost as blue as the sky. From this distance, perhaps three hundred feet up, the fine new-growth needles of the river oaks appear as a copper haze along both sides. And when I look up again we are surrounded by hills, precipitous now and closely set. Endless hills, and they are climbing ever higher too. Climbing into the sky. Two wedge-tail eagles gyre halfway to heaven above us, hunting together, as the male and the female often do – enjoying the view. This is breathtaking country. So magnificent, I could almost forget why I'm here altogether.

Bloody sheila.

Thanks for that intrusion, Pater.

Don't listen to him, Ben.

No, Mama, I don't. But I wonder what the bastard's doing now. Does he miss her? At all? Or is he too preoccupied with his embarrassment that I'm not abroad with the QMI, chasing Dutch farmers through the African bush? What for? Diamonds and gold for Empire? Glory? Honour? Queensland beef prices will be at the bottom of it, whatever his motivations are.

Coward
,
he called me like a shot in the back as I walked away from him. What would he know about courage?

‘Not exactly a popular route, is it?' Cos adds beside me, mindlessly bored already.

And I laugh; God, but he can make me laugh, make me glad he is my friend. I ask him: ‘Aren't you at all inspired by the scenery?'

‘Not really, no.' A stupid question, of course. The only river he paints is the Brisbane, as fat and lazy as him, and his landscapes are most often of human geographies: of pin-headed bush cockies tipping cyanide tins into waterholes; black trackers leashed to constables pursuing Kanakas through the cane; the never-ending undulations of Susan's breasts. His hanging offences, as he calls them; his commentary on the sins of all our fathers – as disreputable and out of rhythm as everything else about him. And as concealed: none of them ever leave the studio.

But he offers now: ‘I'll make some drawings of the girl for you, though. She is very pretty, I'll give her that.'

‘Will you just?' I smile. This is an apology, of sorts, I suppose, and I accept it: a sketch of her from him would be good, too. ‘I'll be sure to snatch it from you before you give her a curly moustache, then.'

He ignores that; too much whingeing yet to do: ‘How far do you reckon now?' he asks me, looking painfully into nowhere – and blindly. Across the ravine a landslide gashes the side of a slope like a fresh wound cut into ochre flesh. Ahead, a bridge made of rubble straddles one point of nowhere to the next: who would not wonder at the nerve of the men who built it there?
That's
courage.

I look down at the edge of the road here, the sandstone inexorably crumbling towards the Macquarie below, and I can't resist: ‘Oh, about a four hundred foot drop.'